Here's a question I've received a few times over the years. Dave Mackey was one of several folks who wrote to ask about an aspect of Johnny Carson's Tonight Show…

Was thinking tonight about the old Tonight Show and the comedy troupe known as The Mighty Carson Art Players came to light. And then I start searching around for who these people were, and come up pretty dry.

Here's what I know: From their involvement with the Tea Time Movie sketches, both Carol Wayne and Teresa Ganzel were members. There was also an actor named Fred Holliday who was part of the troupe; he hosted an ABC daytime show called The Girl In My Life (sort of a 70's rehash of Queen For a Day, with just as much schmaltz), and a few commercials for some auto parts company (maybe AC/Delco) with character actor Norm Alden. But who were the others?

The answer is basically that there was no actual troupe of people called The Mighty Carson Art Players. It was a way of billboarding at the top of the show that Johnny was doing a sketch later during the proceedings. The actors they hired to be in said sketch were the actors they hired for that sketch. There was no roster from which they were drawn. That said, there were performers who were used over and over like the ones you mention.

When Johnny's show as based in New York, they drew from the local talent pool there and after he moved the show to Burbank in 1972, they used actors from out here. The two Matinee Ladies you mention were probably on more than anyone else and I would guess the most frequent male player was Peter Leeds. But I don't know of any way to formally figure this out.

Originally, the Matinee Ladies in the Tea Time Movie Sketch were whatever good-looking lady was otherwise booked as a guest on that night's show. I remember Paula Prentiss doing it a number of times. At some point, Carol Wayne did it and Johnny and his writers seized on the comedy potential from a lady who had prominent breasts and an odd, clueless way of delivering whatever lines she was given. So Carol did it regularly until her death in 1985.

As I recall, once he thought enough time had passed, Johnny brought Art Fern back and did the sketch with a couple of different ladies before my pal Teresa Ganzel got the gig. I wrote about her back here but here's an excerpt for those of you too lazy to click…

Teresa had become a recurring occupant of Johnny's guest chair. She had first turned up there in 1983 when she was on to promote a situation comedy on which she was then a regular — Teachers Only, which not coincidentally was produced by Carson Productions. Johnny found her amusing and charming, and had her back several times. She fit the eye candy requirement but was smart-funny as opposed to stupid-funny.

Finally, around late '86, they tried her out as the Matinee Lady and not only kept her in that esteemed position but began using her in other sketches, including a very funny series where she and Johnny played salesfolks on a channel not unlike the Home Shopping Network and another batch where they played TV news co-anchors.

Someone wrote once to ask me why Johnny even bothered to do the Mighty Carson Art Players sketches. They were obviously a lot more work than just doing another segment chatting with some guest. Here is my understanding, gleaned from talking with several of Johnny's writers and also his long-time producer, Fred DeCordova…

Johnny grew up in an era when the highest achievement a TV comedian could reach was his own show in prime-time…like The Red Skelton Show (for which Johnny briefly wrote) or The Jack Benny Program. That was his goal and he got it in 1955. The Johnny Carson Show failed and after it was axed, Johnny became determined to get another shot at it and to not make the same mistakes. Everything he did thereafter career-wise was done with an eye towards getting another prime-time variety series.

When he took on the game show Who Do You Trust? on ABC, it was with the thought that succeeding there would improve his profile well enough to segue to a prime-time program on ABC. Then when he was offered The Tonight Show, he saw that as a better route to a better network's prime-time schedule. The idea was that he would do The Tonight Show for a few years and then tell NBC that he wanted to give it up for the series he really wanted to do. Towards that end, he insisted his Tonight Show regularly feature sketches with him playing characters.

That was how The Mighty Carson Art Players came to be. His predecessor Jack Paar never did sketches or played characters but this was Johnny's way of reminding all that he could do more than deliver a monologue and then sit behind a desk. He also at times insisted the Tonight Show promotions and the show's opening include clips not of him behind that desk but playing characters in sketches.

If I'd ever been able to interview Carson, one of the questions I would have asked him is "At what point did you realize that going from The Tonight Show to a prime-time variety hour would be a step down, not up, and a risky one?" I would guess it was some time after the move to California but I'm really not sure. I am though pretty sure that he came to that realization. He could do The Tonight Show for huge bucks and stardom for the rest of his performing career or he could risk it all on that prime-time dream and perhaps end that career in failure. Sometimes, following your longtime dream is not always your best alternative.

From that point on, the sketches were a part of the show just because they were a part of the show…and maybe because Johnny wanted to remind people that he was a comedian hosting a talk show and not someone like Merv Griffin or Mike Douglas who were talk show hosts, pure and simple. So the Mighty Carson Art Players weren't a troupe of comic actors. They were Johnny's way of reminding the world and maybe himself that he was capable of more than the monologue and interviewing the starlet of the week.

I received a nice donation the other day from a friend I haven't spoken to in an awful long time…and by "awful long time," I mean the previous century. I can't tell you why we haven't spoken since then. I know we didn't have a fight or any sort of disagreement. I just didn't get around to calling him and he didn't get around to calling me. If I had called him in recent times, I wouldn't have gotten him since his phone number has changed but he was nice enough to include the current one in a note accompanying his donation — "just in case you ever want to catch up."

So I gave him a call and we caught up, which was mostly a matter of him catching me up on what he's been up to these years. I started to tell him some of what had happened with me but he said, of the first few things I tried to tell him, "I know…I read your blog." It had never occurred to me he might be among those following this silly thing. I think we're going to get together once our respective schedules unclog a bit.

What I was going to write here before I spotted his donation was how pleased I am to see donations from folks I don't know. I guess I thought of my "readership" as the people who write in but it isn't. It's apparently a pretty substantial percentage and that pleases me. But it's also pleasing to see a donation from someone I know…and today it was especially pleasing to get some bucks from someone I know but haven't heard from in way too long a time. When it's the right someone I haven't heard from in way too long a time, that's way better than money.

This happened back in January of 2022 and maybe you heard about it then but I didn't. Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster were starring in The Music Man on Broadway and it came time for one of those regular pitches to donate cash to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, a most worthy charity. If you go to Broadway much, you've heard these fund-raising speeches at the end of more than a few shows. On this occasion, they decided to auction off a pair of gloves signed by Mr. Jackman and Ms. Foster and it was a very entertaining and spirited round of bidding…

But that was nothing compared to the previous November when they auctioned off Jackman's straw hat…

Gee, I wish Nicole Kidman was reading my blog this week.

A good A.M. to you all but especially to those of you who've clicked on my little banner to donate any amount — small, big or damned generous. I'm going to hector you for a few more days and then not ask again 'til next September. Yesterday, you might have noticed that this blog had a brief outage. The reason it was brief was that the very expensive hosting company I pay to host this site of mine caught the tech problem and fixed it even as I was connecting on the phone to their support department.

That kind of super service is what I'm paying for and, by extension, what you lovely donors are paying for. If I was still with either of my first two hosting companies, you would not be reading this because this blog would still be offline and I'd be waiting for someone there to call me back. Longtime followers of this blog may remember those instances.

If you came here today seeking my "hot take" on the possible/maybe/looming progress in ending the Writers Guild strike, I'm sorry to disappoint you. In the immortal words of Sergeant-of-the-guard Hans Schultz…

Well, I do know enough to be cautious about what's being leaked to the press. I know this because — and I think it's okay to reveal this now — back in the even-longer-than-this-one Writers Guild Strike of 1988, one of my contributions to the WGA effort was planting stories in one of the two industry trade papers of the time. (They were Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety and they used to be on paper and come in the mail five days a week. They're now both websites with considerably less influence on the business.)

I never planted lies. I planted the truth spun the way the WGA hoped it would be spun. As negotiations dragged on — or didn't happen at all — the Guild's then-president George Kirgo would tell me what to plant. This was a tactic that surprised no one as we all knew the Producers were doing the same…and with more clout to get things reported the way they wanted them reported.

I would phone up a reporter whose name I do not recall and who I never met in person. He had phoned me a couple of times for help with pieces he was writing that touched on the comic book industry. That was how I knew him.

That was how I became his "Deep Throat" except that we never met at 1 o'clock in the morning in a parking garage and I would never be played by Hal Holbrook. But I'd phone him with a tip and while I never told him I was tipping at the request of a WGA official, I never dissuaded him from his assumption that I wasn't. He usually printed whatever we wanted printed pretty much the way we wanted it printed. At the very least, it balanced what the A.M.P.T.P. forces were planting.

I have no knowledge if that's going on now…but we also have no knowledge as to who (if anyone) is tipping various reporters off that a settlement is imminent. I hope it is but because of my little spy/snitch activities, I'm firmly in the "I'll believe it when there's a formal announcement" camp. If you don't like having your emotions feeling like they're on Space Mountain at Disneyland, it's a safer place to be.

There may still be time to have the '88 strike remain the longest Writers Strike ever but it's not likely. Even if they reach a settlement today, by the time the whole guild could vote to ratify, the current labor action may set the record. The '88 strike was 153 days and I think this one currently stands at 144.

Here's a policy I have that has saved you all a lot of frustration. Every so often, someone I know writes, phones or informs me at some gathering that they're starting a blog. Naturally, they want a plug 'n' link on this blog to drive traffic to their blog and there's a good chance that I will comply…with one condition. I tell them, "I'll link to you after your twelfth post" — or I may give a different number but it's usually between ten and twenty.

"Let me know when you reach that number," I tell them and they're quite pleased and then I never hear from them again. They lose interest or suddenly can't find the time after post #6 or #7. Whatever the reason, I don't have to link to it and you don't waste your time clicking over to what turns out to be an abandoned, moribund blog. No, don't thank me. Just click on the banner below.

Here's a great "then and now" look at Las Vegas, the "then" being 1988, which is about the time I began visiting that town an average of "all the time." It was, for me, a magical place for many reasons. Here are some of them in no particular order…

I was pretty adept at card-counting in Blackjack — a short term skill which I learned, did for a few years and then gave up forever. I wasn't like some counters who played 24/7 and intensely tried to rack up as many bucks as possible before the casinos got hip and barred them. I was only "backed off" (told to go play elsewhere) once and that wasn't even a time I was winning due to counting. I'd play 'til I was a few hundred ahead but still looked like a guy who was just lucky…the kind who'd give it all back when he kept playing. I just didn't give it back. I always went home in the positive.

I had my first really good, practical laptop computer so whenever I gave up Blackjacking for that trip, I could just stay in my room and write scripts. It was kinda fun to work, untethered to a normal get-up-in-the-morning, work-until-night schedule. I ate, slept and wandered around Vegas whenever I felt like doing those things.

It was cheap. Food then in Vegas was cheap and shows were cheap. In 1991, expert magician Lance Burton opened one of the best shows I've ever seen at the Hacienda Hotel. It was $15.00 and I saw it many, many times. Hotel rooms were also cheap but because of all my Blackjack playing, I had plenty of "comps" to stay in different hotels for nothing. And to get to and from the city on Southwest Airlines was like taking the bus both in terms of frequent departure times and cost.

I had other reasons for visiting Vegas but I'll save them for a follow-up post. Right now, here's the video. It starts with a look at Bob Stupak's Vegas World, the tackiest hotel-casino on the strip. The interior of it looked like it had been decorated by a ten-year-old Star Trek fan and Mr. Stupak made all his employees — even the Asian and Hispanic ones — wear these badges that said, "Kiss me, I'm Polish." I miss that kind of place in Las Vegas…

Okay, PayPal has unfrozen my account. We're back on…

PayPal has put a temporary freeze on my being able to accept donations through them. I think I know what it's about and I should have it cleared up in a day or three. If you were about to send me money, hold that thought.

Here's footage of Los Angeles back in what they say is the twenties — not the current twenties but the previous twenties. The film has been tweaked and colorized and someone added a bogus soundtrack to it but it's still wonderful history. I especially like those old cars, every one of which looks like Laurel and Hardy should be stepping out of it…

There's a saying I don't like much that goes "The man who won't be beaten can't be beaten." It sounds good at arm's length but when you think about it, what if two men who won't be beaten fight a duel to the death? That's going to be a helluva long duel to the death. And in most battles, it takes more than refusing to be beaten to win. It might take, for example, skill or strength or maybe brains.

In every heavyweight boxing match, you have two guys who won't be beaten…and then one is.

Years ago, I had a friend who lived by that credo and he was enormously destructive, both to himself and to those around him. It was an obsessive necessity for him to succeed in everything he did…or at least, to never admit he hadn't. He often seemed to have those two things confused. And like I said, he was destructive. If you had, let's say, a mouse running around your house and you asked him to catch it, he would almost certainly catch that mouse. He might, in the process, destroy your home but he would catch that mouse.

Or if he didn't, he'd just insist he had. There was kind of a circular "logic" to his thinking. It was kind of like, "You may think I didn't succeed but as we all know, I always succeed so that proves you're wrong." Something like that.

Few if any of you would know this person or even know of him. He was not particularly successful in his life; not even in any one aspect of his life. But to hear him tell it, he succeeded in every single thing he did…or on those rare occasions when even he couldn't claim he'd achieved what he set out to do, someone sabotaged him, someone lied about him, someone cheated, etc. Sound familiar? I'm not talking about Donald Trump here.

Well, yes I am but I'm also talking about an awful lot of other people these days and not just people in any particular political party. I keep running into or reading about people who tell us how unbeatable they are…and they don't have to do this. If they really win all the time, we'll notice. But since they don't win all the time, they keep telling us they do, how they never lose, how they always "dominate." There's one writer acquaintance I have who just loves that word…"dominate."

He always sounds to me like he will not be satisfied if he is very successful. He must be more successful than someone else. If he won 20 million dollars in the lottery, he would be really pissed if you won 30 million.

My closest friends do not do this, which is one of the reasons they're my closest friends. They get joy from the success of others. They don't make everything into a contest in which you have to "one-up" the other guy. There's just too much of that in this world. Your goal in life should be to be happy…not to be happy when someone else isn't.

Here's the Legal Eagle in the video I promised. In the "pay" version of this, you don't get the commercial at the end and instead, he makes a slightly firmer summation about why the 14th Amendment will probably not keep Donald Trump off presidential ballots…

This blog began on December 18, 2000 so this is Day 8,311. When people ask me, "Do you have a pet?" I usually answer, "No, I have a blog." It's almost the same thing in that you have to keep checking on it and it requires constant feeding. If you are grateful for my pet…

This is Sara Bareilles who, with a fine orchestra and backup singers, delivers a nice rendition of "When You Wish Upon a Star." I've always had a strange fondness for this song — strange because I really don't believe in its message. Wishing upon a star is harmless, I suppose, but if you want your dreams to come true, you're going to have to do a lot more than wish, especially because Fate is not always kind and often does not step in and see you through.

Still, it's a great song. Like almost everyone else, I liked it best when the cricket sang it but this is pretty good too…

I'm not looking at the news much these days but every time I do, I see articles about how the prosecutors prosecuting Donald Trump want him to shut up and I see "legal scholars" (the quotes denote that some of them are dubious in their expertise) saying that every time Trump opens his mouth, he confesses to something and hands them evidence to use against him. What is wrong with this picture?

Earlier today, I started writing but did not finish or post an item about how all this stuff about how the 14th amendment could get Trump disqualified from many ballots. I'm thinking that the wording of it seems too vague or arguable to me to achieve what many are hoping it will achieve. I'm still not convinced he'll be the Republican nominee but if he is, he'll be on all or most state ballots.

But I'm not going to finish or post what I started writing. A little while ago, I watched a new video by Devin "Legal Eagle" Stone. It's members-only at the moment but it should be on YouTube (and on this site) later this evening or tomorrow. He basically says the same thing but says it better with more backing in laws and precedents. So I'm going to let an attorney speak for me…which is something Mr. Trump oughta try.

This image seems to be ricocheting around Ye Olde Internet and several folks, knowing of my dislike for candy corn, have sent it to me. It's a sign for MJ's Steel City Sports Bar & Grill, which Google tells me is located on Cliff Mine Road in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania.  Next time I'm in that area which I've never been to and can't imagine why I would ever have reason to visit, I'll have to drop in and try their Chicken Parm Hoagie.

Actually, I have stopped belittling candy corn since my sweet tooth went away, which mysteriously happened a year or so after my 2006 Gastric Bypass Surgery.  I am still repulsed at the remembered taste of candy corn but now I also feel that way about Hershey Bars, M&Ms, Butterfingers, Reese's Pieces, Raisinets, Snickers, Milky Ways, chocolate-covered anything, etc.  So it seems unfair to pick on candy corn.  Cole slaw is, of course, quite another matter.